10 Ways Writers Can Drive Social Change

Whether we write full-length books or free verse poems, captions on Instagram or copy for ads, lyrics for music or lines for video game avatars, our pen is allegedly mightier than the sword. Some of our might is obvious, of course. Pens start revolutions and stir revelations.

(7 Writing Tips That Also Apply to Life)

However, our might does not end with what our pen writes. We also have choices of which pen, different ways to hold the pen, opportunities to share the pen, and influence over how the pen is viewed. That is, writers can use the pen to challenge the status quo.

With some help from fellow writers, here are 10 ways we as writers can drive social change.

1. We can name things: Philosophers and psychologists have long discussed whether we can think about something that we cannot name. We name things and create shared vocabularies. We make a feeling, an experience, or a concept accessible and addressable by others. We make those who would gaslight us by negating that feeling, experience, or concept, work harder to do so.

2. We can frame things: We care about word selection and the words we select shape how people think. Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson makes this point clearly with her intentional use of casteism versus racism in the book Caste. Her word choice frames things. I have been learning how my use of ableist language like “blind” when I mean “ignorant to” perpetuates the inferiority of disabled people. We are experts in the power of words and can use that power to frame things.

3. We can legitimize: Think about who we quote, cite, feature, center. Systemic forces work against us here. The biases of our society and our minds will make us more likely to hear about, talk about, and read about voices from dominant groups (here is an example of one analysis). My co-authored research has shown the power of a longer shortlist when trying to generate more gender-diverse hiring pools and perhaps the approach applies to our research as well. (Tip: Instead of thinking of your top three sources, generate a list of 10, and then start reaching out to three of them.)

4. We can document: We are taught to write for our audience. While this is sound advice, sometimes the audience is an unidentified future reader. For that reader, we capture the reality of how change happens; document the challenges faced by a community; chronicle the journey of an individual in transition; record the specifics of life at a particular point in time. What is uninteresting to our present selves may become essential to our future selves who are driving change and needing “the receipts” in order to do so.

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5. We can (re)define what is good: We value good writing. Not just value—we cherish, cling to, cuddle with good writing. Still, each of us has marinated in whatever structures we were taught were good, or that we adopted as good, leaving us with structures we have decided are bad. Maybe it’s about grammar. Or genre. Or vocabulary. Or adverbs. Those structures can protect—or challenge—the status quo, as writer / poet Chen Chen explains.

6. We can make meaningful, visible choices: Writer Nicole Gulotta highlights the choices away from our writing. We buy and read books; we curate our social media feeds; we speak on panels and at events. Through our choices, we validate or challenge the status quo. And when we articulate the why behind our choices, explains historian Pamela Toler—for example, declining a panel invitation when we are yet another dominant group member and suggesting an alternate invitee—we help others better notice missed opportunities.

7. We can hold attention: Good storytelling is irresistible and makes it possible to focus human attention on even the least sexy of topics. By making the unsexy sexy through words, we can shape the narrative and spark the zeitgeist. Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon said that attention is the “bottleneck” of human thought. Good writing can break the bottleneck for good, pulling attention where it is needed, when it is needed.

8. We can make content accessible: One in four Americans is disabled, but many writers exclude them from their content. Writer, captionist, and accessibility expert Courtney Craven asks, “Are you unintentionally keeping readers from your content?” and explains the easy solutions during this excellent Accessibility for Writers guide. Images can be accompanied by alt text. PDFs can be made screen reader friendly. Hashtags can be made readable by capital letters at the start of each word. Color contrast can be made seeable.

9. We can amplify others: If we are writing and someone is reading what we are writing, then we have a platform. When possible, we can co-author, bring in guests, or hand over the mic. We can pass on work we turn down to folks less likely to be networked into those opportunities. We can share our network and introduce writer friends to each other. Our platforms often have space for others.

10. We can mobilize: Our words connect people to ideas to people who want to engage with those ideas. Even more so on the internet, words seed action. Many people want to act, but don’t know how and are less likely to act first/alone. Writers tell us how and create collectives.

Inspired? Go forth! Overwhelmed? Start somewhere. Writer and activist Silas House once signed a book for my children with the words, “Be revolutionary, every day.” I think of that advice often, in tandem with the oft-offered advice to “write, every day.”

Perhaps, with our pen, we can do both.

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